Red State, Meet Police State

A federal employee gets hassled by Homeland Security for antiwar stickers on his car. Is it a mistake, a new rule, or the part of a trend of the First Amendment being bullied out of existence? Read the transcript, read the rules and decide for yourself

Dwight Scarbrough's idea of political dissent is one that rubs some people the wrong way. He likes to blame his compulsion for peaceful troublemaking on his birthday: October 2, the same as Ghandi. However, a few of Scarbrough's techniques are all his own--especially when it comes to his truck.



For instance, when the Iraq War was looking imminent, not long after September 11, Dwight attached a garbage bag to the back of his truck bed. He splattered the bag and the truck with ketchup and added a sign reading, "This veteran knows that our children are worth more than a $6.95 body bag." When he drove down the freeway, the bag would inflate and appear occupied.

"That one was a little in-your-face and on-the-edge," Scarbrough recalls. "It got a lot of response."

Scarbrough wasn't always so anti-military. During the waning years of the Cold War, he even served five years on a nuclear submarine for the U.S. Navy. But now, instead of trying to stop the spread of "red" states like China and the USSR, Dwight lives in a red state--Idaho. He's the founder and head of Boise's local branch of Veterans for Peace, he leads seminars exposing military recruitment practices in schools, and he--and his truck--are fixtures at nearly every Democratic, antiwar or pro-peace event in town.

cont'd...

http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A158729

I was only able to confirm the location of the office after asking the security officer at the Natural Resource Complex, whose job (ostensibly, at least) it is to enforce the rules concerning pamphlets, dogs and other controlled substances on federal property. He would not comment about the incident, saying, "If this is about what I think it's about, I'm not allowed to say nothing." He referred me to "FPS, Federal Courthouse, Department of Homeland Security," to find someone who would be able to comment. When I asked who I should say referred me, he covered his nameplate with his hand.

The "office," once I found it, wasn't much of an office at all, from a service perspective. The door was locked and there was neither a receptionist nor a desk at the front window. When I rang the doorbell, a woman emerged from a nearby cubicle and spoke to me through a tennis-ball-sized hole in the window. She would not confirm the name or identity of the officers, nor their badge numbers (Scarbrough, of course, had written them all down). I slipped a business card through the hole, and by press time, no one had called me back.